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Best Old-fashioned Dessert

To the average expat Brit, steamed treacle pudding might conjure memories—nightmares, really—of morose school lunches ending tragically with a heavy suet-laden thing covered in lumpy custard. In April Bloomfield’s hands, though, the homely dessert has emerged as a showstopper. “My mother always made a steamed pudding as a treat for Sunday get-togethers,” says the chef, who has modernized the recipe by swapping butter for the suet (the solid white fat surrounding the kidneys of sheep and cows). It’s something of a production for the cramped kitchen, requiring over an hour of steaming to achieve the proper moist, fluffy texture. A bit of lemon zest cuts the sweetness of the Lyle’s Golden Syrup that glistens on top, and a hint of vanilla flavors the velvety-smooth custard that’s drizzled over the imposing portion ($20 for two, but you’ll need a larger party to do the thing justice).

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So what exactly does “best” mean in a city with thousands of pizza joints, hundreds of celebrity masseuses, and museum-worthy concept shops on every corner? Well, in the case of this, our annual “Best of New York” roundup, there’s a heavy emphasis on what’s new or what has somehow remained virtually unheard of (until now, of course).